Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

Background

While multiple systems are currently used for transliterating Tibetan words with
the roman alphabet in ways that precisely render the Tibetan spelling, one
system has emerged as a de facto international standard:
the Wylie system. However, no such
standard has emerged for the phonetic rendering of Tibetan,
and in fact there is no single phonetic system in widespread use. Because
Tibetan spelling practices are extremely conservative – they have remained
essentially unchanged for ten centuries – there is an unusually broad
discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation. Tibetan punctuation chiefly
divides Tibetan words into syllables, each of which may have up to four
horizontal positions (prefix, root letter, suffix, and post-suffix).
Additionally, the root letter can have as many as four vertical positions (the
root letter consonant, superscript consonant, subscript consonant, and vowel).
In contemporary spoken Tibetan, however, many of these components are silent
(although some silent elements do influence the pronunciation of the root letter
and vowel). Because of this, transliterations of Tibetan words that render the
standard spellings into the roman alphabet – for example, bsgrubs – are virtually impossible for the general reader to
pronounce (bsgrubs is pronounced “drup”).
Compounding this difficulty is the fact that, while Tibetan spelling is
standardized across the entire Tibetan cultural region, the pronunciation of a
given word can differ markedly from one spoken dialect to the next. Because
general readers cannot decipher Tibetan words in transliteration (e.g., bsgrubs) it is impossible for them to know how to
pronounce the words, and as a result they have an extraordinarily hard time
remembering Tibetan personal names, place names, terms, and so forth. Thus, the
use of such transliteration systems significantly restricts the utility of the
resulting materials for anyone who does not know the Tibetan language.

Because of this situation, the use of phonetic systems for rendering Tibetan
words in non-Tibetan publications (journals, monographs and the like as well as
maps and other non-text media) to facilitate their use by non-specialists is
common. A plethora of phonetic systems have emerged, most of which are specific
to the author who created them and many of which are far from systematic.
Further complicating matters is the lack of standardization. In fact, none of
the myriad phonetic systems has developed into anything resembling even a proto-standard, and no system has gained widespread
acceptance or use. As a result, the reader is confronted with a dizzying array
of phonetic renderings. For example, the personal name that is transliterated as
don grub is rendered in various phonetic
systems as Dondup, Döndrup, Dondrup, Dhondup, Dhundup, Tondup, Tondub, Thöndup,
and so forth. The same is true of the name of Tibet’s second city, spelled
gzhis ka rtse in transliteration, for which
the following represent some of the phonetic renderings in current use:
Shigatse, Shikatse, Rigaze, Xigaze, Zhigatse, and Zhikatsé. In addition, authors
will often render words phonetically according to their pronunciation in a
specific Tibetan dialect, which creates a second level of complexity and
divergence. The result is that readers cannot recognize Tibetan names and terms
across different publications due to the widely variant systems of rendering
Tibetan phonetically. An additional negative consequence is that computer search
routines for Tibetan words are greatly hindered by the lack of
standardization.

Because IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is highly technical and therefore
difficult for most people to either write or read, THL employs a relatively
precise phonological scheme for transcribing Tibetan for linguistic purposes.
This scheme, created by Nicolas Tournadre, is referred to as “Tournadre Phonetic
Transcription” (“Tournadre” for short). However, this scheme is still too
technical to be of use for representing Tibetan words in easy-to-pronounce forms
within non-Tibetan publications oriented towards a wide readership.

#!essay=/thl/phonetics/

THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription of Standard
Tibetan, by David
Germano